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On ABC’s 7.30 Report last night, interviewer Leigh Sales unmasked the man who would be PM for the empty vessel he truly is.

Abbott is comfortable only when he can mouth slogans. Take him out of that comfort zone, as Sales did last night, and he’s close to inarticulate. Incapable of coherent human exchange, and in a fashion approaching the robotic, he searches desperately for the slogan he needs from his vast vault of verbal mediocrity. With the fierce concentration of a five year-old tying his shoelaces, mouth working, eyes swivelling, tics pulsing, Abbott digs deep into the black back caverns of his memory, and after a delay that causes the viewer to practically cringe with disbelief, he emerges to triumphantly flourish a slogan he’s finally managed to recover, the one he hopes will save him from actually having to answer a question.

I can’t remember an interview that has so thoroughly exposed Abbott’s utter uselessness as a leader, or indeed, as an MP at all. Racist, misogynist, ill-informed, incapable of intelligent debate on just about any topic, riddled with insecurities, Abbott’s only talent, if it can be described as such, is chanting Liberal mantras, those repetitive, monotonous utterances that mean nothing, inspire no one, and address none of the issues facing this country today.

Combine this lack of talent with an overwhelming ego, an excessive sense of entitlement, and a delusional belief that he is born to be PM while conspicuously lacking all the qualities that position demands, and Tony Abbott is revealed as the pathetically proud owner of a piteously inadequate mind.

We need many more interviews such as this one, in which Abbott is called to account for his lies and mischief. He’s been getting away with it for far too long. A few more encounters like last night’s, and surely the Liberal party will have to think hard about who they’ve chosen to lead them into the next election.

In all of Abbott’s evasive and empty answers to Leigh, I kept thinking of Woody Allen and his remark when looking at an incomprhensible piece of modern sculpture, ” it has so much of that other nothingness.”

The Libs are so disconnected they don’t even realise that Abbott should NEVER have rolled up for the interview(period) let alone with the same stupid screeching BS mantra.
This has Graham Morris all over it.
The man who thinks he was the man who invented John Howard.
Pass me the sick bucket.

Maybe feminist should put a call out for women voters to “Kick Abbott to death?”

Imagine being the dog in Abbott’s house when he got home after that VERY public philosophical flensing by a ‘mere’ female.He can expect more caustic confrontations going fwd when it comes to women,methinks.
What’s the bet he suddenly starts championing women’s causes, and gets seen with high achieving females starting tomorrow.Probably disabled female high achievers.

Thanks for the heads-up! Can’t watch the video at work, but interestingly the transcript is just incomprehensible… Nothing like a good public humiliation though so I promise to watch it when I get home, and cringe in solidarity.

Meanwhile however I saw a great bumper sticker this morning (on a truck, no less) which unfortunately sums up the reason why Tony Abbott will remain a viable electable leader:

“A few more encounters like last night’s, and surely the Liberal party will have to think hard about who they’ve chosen to lead them into the next election.”

Or a shake up in ABC land under the incoming coalition, and Sales getting a one way ticket to oblivion.
Whatever the result,it will be what the media/mining magnates demand.
They have done as predicted and moved from vocal upfront campaigning,to silent back door approaches.
This can only mean one thing.
The new terms and conditions of the coalition/MSM team (read government) is being drafted ready for the inevitable.

One of the funniest interviews since Quentin Demster asked Russell Cooper, “What do you understand by the doctrine of the separation of powers?” way back in 1986.

Unfortunately though the only thing that emerges from this apart from Abbott’s utter vacuousness in the face of real questioning is the true nature of the rod Gillard made for her own back in the wake of the Houston enquiry. …

~

LEIGH SALES: Do you – I’m asking you though, not about the Government. I’m asking: do you accept that it’s legal to come to Australia to seek asylum by any means – boat, plane – that it is actually legal to seek asylum?

TONY ABBOTT: I think that people should come to Australia through the front door, not through the back door. If people want a migration outcome, they should go through the migration channels.

LEIGH SALES: That’s an answer to the question if I asked you: how do you think people should seek asylum?, it’s not an answer to the question: is it legal to seek asylum?

TONY ABBOTT: And Leigh, it’s the answer I’m giving you because these people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers, but obviously the people who are coming to Australia by boat, they want permanent residency; that’s what they want and this government has given the people smugglers a business model by putting permanent residency on the table. And even though the Government has adopted just one of the Howard Government’s successful policies, it won’t adopt temporary protection visas or the willingness to turn boats around where it’s safe to do so.

~

So give him and inch and he’ll take a mile is clearly the order of the day, and Gillard in my view has already yielded the last of the moral high ground around this issue.

Paul,
When it comes down to it Gillard is only the bunny in the spotlight,but she is the one who ‘could’ do a Rudd and neuter the factions,but she wants the glory,the job,the perks etc,so she must wear the blame for legislation she holds up as hers.
She is the PM now,not Abbott or Howard,no matter how minority the govt is,they still willingly went AWOL on their own core values.
I take as dim a view of Howard and Abbott as most do on; refugees,lies and smears,but self inflicted policy by way of plagiarism, or too sh*t scared not to,or to plump up the polls is no excuse.

They all effectively have blood on their hands at varying levels.
What is Australia’s political position on genuine Tamil refugees?
Refugees from OUR chosen war zones?

Can anyone else smell bullshit?
Wow the Libs really are in damage control.
Abbott said last night he did not.That is the truth.He cannot rewrite history to reverse the consequences.

Either that or he lied last night.
Either way,50% of the last 2 days a Great Big New Lie must have been spun.
And then there’s the issue at point,bullshitting (blaming Labors new taxes)about what BHP said in their written and spoken words about the canning of OD.

Oh what a mangled web we weave, if not written down,do not believe….
If Sales was a man.Tony?

Trying to weasel his way out of this could be the beginning of the end for Abbott.

Marius Kloppers was at pains to point out the real reasons for this are not to with the Carbon Tax or any other such politically expedient scapegoats, but with “market conditions, including subdued commodity prices and higher capital costs”. He’s trying in my view to responsibly convey a reality that while far from panic stricken says that resources booms aren’t forever. That’s an important signal for Australia’s economy and for employment that may well concern politicians and voters alike. Trying to twist it into a point scoring exercise as Abbott did is just plain stupid! And bloody irresponsible!

People whose futures may well depend on BHP’s continued success, and in some small way that may be many of us, won’t thank Tony for treating it with such scant regard as to play the blame card before the facts were fully known. He hadn’t even read the report!

It is difficult to know which one of the vast google selection concerning Julia’s bullying of the mining industry and everything else aperson should read.
Then there is Swan bullying the mining industry.
There is an epidemic of bullying of the mining industry. A delicate flower indeed, the mining industry, by all accounts.
In the end I plumped for Crikey. The comments section following the cartoon was immense and the skepticism of Abbott remained intense, despite every one already being told by Tony that because Tony said it it was true.

In fairness to what was announced yesterday the government are proposing to take the bulk of the UNHCR identified refugees from Indonesia under the newly lifted quota arrangements. They don’t seem to be too keen on talking much about the detail which I think would be of some considerable interest to many of us who really want to see us move away from the Howard era policies she seems to be enacting at the same time.

It seems to me that this could well be an each way bet, but that even in a horse race unless there’s a ring in that there might still be a winner. Which is just to say that even if I’m disappointed that Gillard hasn’t taken the same tough, articulate and defiant stance against xenophobia that she has against “misogynist nut jobs”, that some of what we’d wanted to happen will occur, and that as a result there’s a chance that the hyperbolic rantings of the “pull factors” mob will be proven false. Not to mention the fact that at least some more of the refugees will be given a fairer go.

Others may disagree. To me the facts are unclear so I’m interested to be informed where possible. But for others I know it won’t seem like enough. But if any step in the right direction, however tentative is a chink of light at the end of a tunnel (not a train coming from the opposite direction), then maybe there’s hope.

Hang on Marilyn, I think the right to apply for asylum is undiminished by these changes, even if Abbott chokes on the admission that it is so.

The cherry picking will always be possible as long as the numbers worldwide persist at much higher levels than we’re able to process and resettle. So while I hope we’re not engaging in cherry picking and see no real evidence that we are, the concern would be moot as long as the possibility remains undiminished by any policy changes we’re likely to be able to enact.

I have railed at the phrase “stop the boats” enough times to be frustrated with it, but nor do I think arrival by boat is the ideal mechanism for selecting which refugees get resettled here. I think we have to genuinely say we do want to stop the loss of life at sea rather than simply using that as political code for wanting to stop refugees from coming. So if this plank of the new policy is what it purports to be, if Indonesia cooperates, and if it delivers those 6,000 odd people from the camps there then it will inevitably help to save lives.

If I’m to be exceedingly hopeful then the direct intake may even negate the need for offshore processing on Manus and Nauru due to the establishment of a functioning queue that has not previously existed in Indonesia. But I’m sure that as long as shock jocks and isolationist stirrers lurk among us then any planned intake of refugees will be accused of creating “pull factors”. So what I’m effectively arguing is that reasoning to the effect that push factors are what drives refugee numbers will it seems soon be put to the test. And if we’re right then we will inevitably find ourselves having wasted quite a wad of cash on establishing processing facilities on those islands whose real purpose was to ensure that the coalition allowed legislation to pass.

I don’t know that what we’re seeing will be all that it’s cracked up to be, but I think there may be room for optimism and perhaps just a little watchful vigilance to make sure they live up to their promises. Our recent history being such as it has been gives rise to some concerns that levels of support for refugee resettlement programs, including from within the bureaucracy, leave an awful lot to be desired.

Well, yes it is but those refugees have to actually be under our control – ie here in Australian territory – before any consideration of repatriation is made. Repatriation to a stable non-persecuting homeland is no. 1 on the list. We cannot cannot do that from Australia; all we can do is to accept some of the refugees who are suitable for resettlement.
And of course we will cherry-pick. We’d be mad not to.

And we’d like to repatriate the asylum seekers who arrive on our shores, but the vast majority don’t want to be repatriated but to live in Australia : irregular immigration, in other words, and no country in the world would allow irregular immigration if they could prevent it.

The strangest thing in our debate is that we are the country that is very near to being in the very best position and is very nearly able to prevent it! And still the conservatives are not satisfied.

There’s no need to get strident IN CAPITALS like that especially since it isn’t making you any clearer. The claim you’ve made about spending $360 Million on importing migrants passed off as refugees reads like the rantings of a radio shock jock, and leaves me similarly confused as to what you’re trying to imply. Frankly I don’t see how it might be supported, but I invite you to try if you’re serious about what you’ve written.

If we’re not quite careful your words could be construed as wanting to deal with the issue of asylum by divorcing resettlement from protection using TPVs. Something that in the past was an absolutely lousy solution because the amount of time allowed for a decision on people’s resettlement status was virtually open ended.

I’ll agree with you if the point you want to make is just to ask why the hell it takes so long to process people. Clearly part of the solution depends on how we resource the task of processing refugees. And equally obviously the answer would seem to be not well enough. But to say why that is may presume ill of people’s motives in ways we’ve no direct evidence for.

What we have directly contradictory evidence for are policies lifting quotas and talking about bringing people directly from the camps in Indonesia. Doing that requires that we can and do process them and hopefully infers that it may happen in a far more timely manner. If I’m wrong in highlighting this as cause for provisional optimism then by all means please say why?

The idea that we have quotas on the other hand doesn’t rely entirely on the claim that we’re too poor, but rather that we need to resource helping people who we do resettle as opposed to simply regarding them as an economical source of cheap labour for exploitation. Something that I suspect contradicts your seemingly confused ideas about refugees as migrants.

Nor are we the only nation to have quotas. I really don’t know what that claim is based upon. It is an interesting one though, given that having made some not dissimilar comments elsewhere recently I was offered an equally vitriolic response from somebody bemoaning the fact that our acceptance rate for refugees was 90% whereas they claimed other European countries did the right thing in limiting theirs to a mere 30%. This fool hadn’t figured out the the rate at which you might reject people for a given number of possible resettlement places very much depends on the ratio of places to refugees arriving or applying. I think it was Gillard the other day when announcing the expansion of our refugee intake program to 20,000 people, who claimed it makes us second only to the US in total numbers. So notwithstanding the uncertainty I do have about the veracity of that claim I think we can say we’re not necessarily worse that most even if we’re still far from ideal.

Overall the thing that most disappoints me about your comments given that you’re so angry, apparently at something I’ve said, is that it remains anything but clear what it was I said that you didn’t like. And I really can’t respond to half of what you’ve written because I really don’t know what you’re on about?

No other country has a quota for those who seek asylum, it is simply not possible to do so.

Why are you so ignorant yet babble so many words?

Resettlement is not protection, we have legalised queue jumping and moron punters pay for it.

Go and read the rules on resettlement v protection and then get back to me.

I don’t much care if we do the resettlement thing but we pretend it is a legal obligation when it is no such thing.

Here is David Manne with the facts of law.

DAVID MANNE: Well of course share the same, you know, extreme concerns about people dying at sea, the tragedies that we have seen, but I think that this panel report is the wrong way to go about it.

And the first thing that I would say is this, what we’ve seen with the panel’s recommendations and the like is a fundamental misunderstanding or, indeed, an abandonment of our commitments under the Refugees Convention because there has been, in describing the recommendations and what frames them, a fundamental conflation and misconception in that conflation, of our obligations under the Refugees Convention and, at the same time, resettlement. Which in simple terms mean this: having signed the Refugees Convention, we’ve committed to ensuring that we protect refugees who come here, not punish them and send them to harm elsewhere, which is precisely part of what essentially will happen with these recommendations and laws.

Resettlement, that is, resettling people from overseas and increasing those numbers, as is part of the recommendation, is welcome. But that’s not a legal obligation that we’ve committed to. That’s part of being a good international citizen. And the frank reality is that most countries in the world don’t have resettlement programs, they don’t resettle people.

We and other nations apply what I suppose could be called notional quotas in terms of how government policy and budgetary allocations are drafted. That was what I was referring to. If you want to make the point that these aren’t recognised in any particular fashion under UN refugee treaties that I suspect you’re correct and fully entitled to do so, but I also think that skirts the practical realities of the situation being made better whenever willingness is indicated to do more to help people in need.

And while I generally agree with David Manne, he is the very pragmatist who suggested Manus Island be reopened over a year ago if it meant more people would be helped. I sympathised with his view then to the same extent that I agree now that the boot is somewhat on the other foot with him saying that punitive responses to boat arrivals are completely unacceptable and something we have to be vigilant against.

I would agree also that the way the new policy has been presented seems duplicitous. There has been a failure to rebuke the unconscionable antipathy that some Australians seem to harbour against refugees given the way prolonged debate devolved into a poisonous race to the bottom. I noted with displeasure that the first thing Labor announced was to adopt a version of former coalition policy by taking what in my view and sincere hope is the unnecessary step of opening processing centres on Manus and Nauru. However a lot of funding is going to make them liveable on a temporary basis with some emphasis on humane conditions that are hopefully going to be a departure from the detention centre (read concentration camp) models of the past.

I’m not happy about their existence and don’t want to see anyone sent there, but I think it was done in part as a means unto a end in terms of getting legislation passed that may also contains the program they announced later for taking people directly from Indonesia.

So what I’m saying here is that there’s some good news in this for 6,000 of the people who would otherwise have been among the most likely candidates for the kind of boat journeys we’ve recently seen all too frequently end in the loss of lives.

Far from being uncritical of what the government does or is doing now, what I’m saying instead is that there are opportunities to enact these measures in ways that can only be an improvement over what occurred in the past. And as critics of the situation I think we have to be prepared to offer cautious optimism. That is to say optimism that exists despite any disappointment we may harbour whenever our most fervently held ideological expectations are not met. The latter is an unrealistic expectation and I think an unreasonable one that we occasionally do more harm than good to insist upon.

My view is that the situation previously was somewhere between marginally to significantly worse. Abbott given an inch wants to take a mile. Nauru isn’t enough for him he wants TPV’s as well. So with any incarnation of a Labor government being better than that, the new policy they’ve introduced has either to pan out in terms that are moderately more satisfactory or we’re staring straight down the gun barrel of the infinite regress that is the mind of Abbott.

My hope therefore is that when people realise that the sky doesn’t fall by taking in the 6,000 and Labor get another term, then quietly and unceremoniously the centres on Nauru and Manus can be allowed to close once again and forever.

That was Robert Manne who said that, he is David Manne’s uncle and he was wrong.

Report today that anyone sent to Nauru is faced with incurable deadly diseases like Japanese encephalitis and others.

And there is no room to compromise on the right to seek asylum.

Everyone without exception has that right so why do even normal people have to rabbit endlessly about bullshit.

And if the morons didn’t whinge incessantly about a few thousand refugees arriving by sea no-one would know and if we didn’t jail them no-one would know anymore than they know that three times more fly here under the radar, lie about it and use the system for years on end.

Well thanks for clearing up the confusion about that names. I initially started to type Robert and then thinking my memory unreliable corrected myself after glancing at your text not realising there were the two Manne’s to consider.

Sure there are tropical diseases in tropical locales no more or less so perhaps than in Indonesia, but I agree it isn’t ideal. The whole thing is of course driven but politics that are even further from ideal, but money is going in to make these processing centres more liveable. And none of us can be sure as yet whether changing the language from calling them detention centres to the new terminology processing centres is going to make a jot of difference to whether they’re dedicated to the purpose of processing or deterring.

But what I think we can be sure of is that some refugees will be better off next week that they were last week. And I think that we can be sure than when Abbott asks for TPV’s they’d be worse off should he come to power. I think we can be sure, even if Tony can’t bring himself to mouth the words, that it is legal to claim asylum. That we’re having to spend too much money to achieve too little is more of a constant when it comes to government. And I guess we can be sure that none of this is ever going to mirror our ideological positions, maybe because somewhat like the whole business of being a refugee it was never about ideals anyway.

So next week a few thousand refugees will be better off, and next week 210,000 children will die of starvation while we spend $5 billion to make 6,000 people a year better off.

Don’t you realise how stupid you sound? And for the refugees who are better off those who asked for help here will be shunted off to die of malaria.

We don”;t trade human beings as if they are our chattels and we don’t colonise other nations to do it.

I swear to god the collective IQ of the most intelligent people here is still only 5.

The right of every person on earth is to seek asylum.

They must not be expelled without due process, they must not be sent to anyplace that is dangerous for any reason, they must be granted the same living and legal rights as the citizens of host nations.

It is as though you feel you’re so right about this that you’re entitled to be completely petulant about the inconvenient reality of a political situation wherein your every demand cannot be met. Good luck railing at the moon, but I don’t think it’ll get you anywhere.

Do you really expect to take 210,000? Because that just isn’t doable in the current political environment. 20,000 clearly is, and maybe with luck we could even double that number, but I don’t think we’d be avoiding the great big lie you mentioned earlier by merely hiding them. People are going to notice and some of them whether we agree or not are going to have their noses out of joint if the refugee program asks too more than they’re willing to allow. And they vote, probably for Abbott, and in greater numbers if Gillard screws this up.

You attitude on the other hand is as bad in some ways as Abbott’s. Given an inch on Nauru he wanted to take a mile and go back to TPV’s. You similarly seem unhappy acknowledging any improvement short of complete acceptance for your ideological position. And as I’ve tried to tell you several times in various ways, it is a good position as ideologies go, with just the one slight reservation that in an ideal world there wouldn’t be refugees.

I’d like to save the 210,000 kids as well, but applying an IQ over 5 to that situation would I think involve ending the deprivation rather than treating them all as refugees and resettling them. In fact ending inequity entirely and tearing down all the borders would be the ultimate ideal and we’d probably be better off in this grand utopian anarcho-syndicalist commune of the future. But we can’t just start with a clean slate under ideal conditions. So please take it as read that deep though our shared disappointment may be we are doing more for refugees that any of our regional neighbours do, meaning some unkind people are going to point and ask why that has to be the case. Our task if we’re to do better is to persuade our fellow Australians rather than browbeat them into changing their attitudes. It may take some time….

If you’re not up for that then by all means outline Australia’s next refugee policy according to Marilyn and defend it while others here pick it mercilessly apart. Because that as it seems is the problem with making any kind of positive statement in an online or similar such debate, everyone’s a such critic that when all the negativity outweighs the last slight tinge of optimism we’ll all be intellectually superior if dishonest enough to ignore the fact that nothing will ever get done.

They, Abbott and cohorts, still have more questions but they don’t know them. ( the questions). So… let me get this right, they not only have no answers but they have questions that they don’t yet know.
One shallow Liberal doesn’t make a summer.

Autobiography?
That’s a self written book.
We recently found out that reading is not his forte,and given he says “only take me on my word if it’s written down”, and he didn’t write ‘that’ commitment down,I think I will bypass his memoirs.
Besides, like the Catholic churches response to institutionalised paedophilia,there are likely to be lots of things left out,glossed over etc.
One thing for sure,Pell and/or Howard will write the teste-moanial for it.

I think the full title for the book would be better as;

“No Mans Land”
Confessions of an ‘Ugly’ Australian
Some might want another subtitle,’Immigrants Son’, thrown in.

Let’s face it Mrs Abbott’s book would be far more enlightening, and definitely more ‘readable’..

Looking again at that picture of Abbott and the upside hanging carcas with this hole in it, one doesn’t want to be uncharitable but why does he smile? What is he so happy about? Perhaps there is more to it than Abbott just relishingh a side of pork with crackling. You just never know with failed people of the cloth.

He is smiling but yet not looking directly at the carcas anymore (with the large hole). Is he having inappropriate thoughts, impure even? We won’t ever know. His mum used to tell him,” keep the hands above the blankets and think of Mother England.

For the record I don’t think I do,or have said ‘that’ especially on the issue at hand.
In fact I keep saying Labor stole the Libs Howardesque xenophobic policy.
Soon enough Abbott will have power and have to deal with dissent in either or both houses.
The status quo will change again,but this is a racist country.Even the Indians have had a gutsful of the liars saying it aint.
They have officially taken note of the ABC proliferation of racism etc.(Read the link I put up.)
Whilst I commend your commitment,Marilyn, I think sooner or later you will need to find a harder head or a softer wall.

The last words Amina Bakhtiyari said to me were “please shoot me Grandma Marilyn, please, please, or the taliban will take me and cut off my head”..

the ALP response when it was discovered that they had been telling the truth all along and that they nearly froze to death in the streets of Rawalipindi was “”so what? they were not genuine refugees”.

Forgive me if I hate the two packs of scabby trash who did this to a 7 year old girl for politics.

Perhaps you don’t know that Vanstone had a letter in her hand 3 days before she deported my kids saying they were Afghans.

Perhaps Helvi you think the ALP didn’t invent the white Australia policy, the prisons for refugees, making refugees pay for the prisons, Al Kateb and all the other atrocities but they did.

And Gillard is worse than Howard, she is the first ever to allow rubber bullets to be used on innocent people, brutal punishments if they riot after months or years of abuse and lies, human trading with Malaysia, forced deportations of Tamils who are arrested and tortured and now back to pernament exile on Nauru and Manus island with the hope that all refugees will stay home and die.

Her evil was displayed in the Lowy speech when she outlined the hell the refugees go through and then said we have to stop them arriving here because proper migrants like her parents might be worried about them getting an advantage.

The only advantaged Afghans I can see are Karzai and the warlords we are propping up.

Doug, when the consequences of a policy decision are not known but become known and are rectified that is one thing.

When the consequences of policy decisions have been documented over and over again in testimonies from the victims and we do it again that makes it doubly evil.

If you don’t understand that simple point then you live in la la land.

Tell me how superior Gillard is to Abbott?

i know many of the programs are excellent but whose program is it? It sure is not hers because she has never in her life elucidated a program beyond the mining tax when she brutalised, the price on carbon which is so watered down as to be worthless and kicking our refugees.

That was her entire election platform.

The problem is they are equals. Two racist ten pound privileged poms brutalising the most marginal in our communities on every social agenda possible.

So tell me again how she is superior as she honks like a goose and talks at us as if we are three years old.

Much to agree with Marilyn.
How is compensating the big polluters and allowing private electricity providers to screw us dry, fixing the climate?
The big polluters pollute the most,buy the most power and at a ridiculously under-priced rate.They are paid to continue to pollute while we switch our lights,stereos,TVs and power off to make ends meet.
Clever.
I guess second best is close enough is the new mantra after,’lets out Liberal the Liberals’.
And,well the polls can’t all be wrong.
Nobody seems to want Gillard or Abbott.
If the two majors cannot adjust the current reality,then we are going to be stuck with one of them.
How the government is made up when all the votes are in may surprise many.
Gillard is as shallow as Abbott,just not as caustic.(Not in public anyway.)
Anyone not believing that is living in lala-land.
Look at her back flips and pseudo coalition stances.
Being the lesser of two evils does not look like getting her re-employed,anyway.
I have said it before,the voting blocks are heading right as the population ages,so every year Labor is diluted anyway.

Number all the boxes people,number ALL the boxes.
And take note which way the state pendulums are swinging.
The NT sent a voluminous message to Canberra about the intervention, and NT Labor now wallows in pain.
The federal Labor pollies are getting info and strategies which are more coalition than Labor.
I think they have been invaded.

If Gillard wants cred she must be reborn as she is in reality,not as she committed to be, for the invisible scumbags who anointed her.
And then after all that Labor still has to leap the media hurdle.Good luck with that.

Hypo really, talk about a species that eats its own young! What is it with the left when we can’t at least marginally by some teeny amount prefer their own to a sworn enemy.

Saying Gillard is as shallow as Abbott is one clear example where the argument exceeds the hypocritical and leaps forth into the hyperbolic. I mean to say, I’ve seen better Labor Prime ministers, and by that I mean all of ’em, but Abbott takes shallowness to a whole new level. He’s only as deep as the number of column inches he gets in the Australian for each new catchphrase and dog whistle.

Well Abbotts inches will always exceed Gillard simply because the media have her tied to the back of a big black pick up truck and are circling the county square full pace.
They won’t stop till it’s just frayed rope.On main stream policy Gillard is not far off Abbott at this stage.
Since when does a Labor govt give loaded rich school the same as struggling ones?
Since when does Labor allow 1700 foreign workers in and whinge about refugees/
C’mon Hudson.
The intervention?
Approving the biggest hole in the ground (again massive foreign worker influx) just because Campbell said so.
I can smell a few union officials who have set up or invested in foreign labour hire companies.I van smell political gratification of church groups.
Just as shallow(maybe due to being hamstrung by the payback for installation) but there we have it.
Labor starting spiraling when they uninstalled a prime minister.That is the reality.

Labor almost has a chance with Rudd, and if he is so toxic to so called Labor supporters,then all I can say is Keating was our last true statesman PM.
They’re not faceless men men Hudson,they’re gutless men,with spineless proxies.

You may be right and give or take a few quibbles your criticisms are mostly accurate, but it won’t change the fact that there are still only two major parties and the other one at this stage having lead the race to the bottom looks setting to take us lemming like into the abyss should we deign to follow.

So if these criticisms of your are meant to be constructive then by all means do the work of putting them constructively. But if not then tearing down the last edifices of resistance to tyranny is no way to protect us from it.

Well I wouldn’t go so far as to ask the unthinkable of you, but at the end of the day if we’re to critique governments and their policies I think we’re intellectually dishonest not to recognise a shift in the right direction when one occurs.

At first blush despite the compromise it took to get there what looks on the surface of the announcement like an improvement may well have been delivered here. Albeit one that seems at odds with the apparent backsliding in other areas, we’re nevertheless left with a situation that could go either way depending on how the parts of the policy are put into practice.

I think and I hope that makes it better than the opposition’s policy, which is truly and openly punitive against asylum seekers. It emerges that knowing that Tony would sell everything “but his arse” to get the top job, begs the question not just as to whether he’d sell his principles, but to whom he might sell them. So far the answer seem to be that he’s intent on selling out to mining magnates, the Murdock press, the smoking lobby, the Christian right, Climate change deniers and Hansonite isolationists. Who’s next?

It may yet be a lesser of two evils kind of deal but looking at the scorecard doesn’t make it that hard to figure out the relative difference between the two.

Oh my god, how can you state with a straight face that Abbott wants to punish innocent asylum seekers without noting that Gillard is doing worse.

She is deliberately dumping innocent human beings on remote islands with no hope of ever having any process because for some bizarre reason three racist ignorant old white men said that refugees who ask for help should have no advantage over refugees who have not asked for help.

This email shows how racist the department is, and this is the department tasked to assess refugee claims which is probably why they are wrong 80% of the time.

Yep,that sounds like a typical Australian workplace email.
No surprise it showed up where it did.
Watch the dept demand a big clean up of the email accts of employees.
Like that will “unracism” the core offenders.

I’m not entirely sure what that awful e-mail has to do with what we were discussing. Do you imagine that with a change of government all those workers would be sacked?

Yes I agree both the major parties have engaged in a race to the bottom over asylum seeker policy, which you don’t think they should even be making.

But when it comes to what one may or may not be able to say with a straight face then statements to the effect that Abbot would be better than Gillard are simply risible.

At what point I wonder would you ever admit that an announcement was made that 6,000 more people from Indonesia would be given a better opportunity to secure a grant of asylum here than they would ever have received otherwise. And as I understand the intent of this new policy those people aren’t headed for any Islands apart from this one. Whoever is left that still wants to get in a boat and come as opposed to waiting until next year has as a result of this change less justification for taking that risk. A less than ideal situation if the disconnect between refugee numbers is a severe one, but not I would hazard in the short term since there are under 6,000 registered with the UNHCR in Indonesia.

So I repeat. This is better than what Abbott wants to do, and better than what we were doing previously. Both of which are justification for the kind of qualified remarks that I made earlier expressing the hope that it will be implemented humanely and to good effect.

1. there will not be 6,000 more people resettled from Indonesia, there will be just 400 which means we will still be warehousing arrivals in that country illegally for 4 or more years and they will still get boats.

Torturing one group of people and pretending to protect another group as a consequence of torturing the first group is monstrous.

This shows the shallowness of Gillard. She let these people drown, as PM it is her job to save people, then used their deaths as an excuse to abuse and torture those who don’t drown and suckered her ignorant colleagues into voting for lies and abuses.

It’s clear that none who know Gillard believe she is the kind little dear those who don’t know her do.

This is a new issue you’ve raised coming out reports I’ve just seen myself. I’ll let Gillard defend her own part in it if any for herself. From what little I know thus far I don’t immediately assume that any wrong decisions made were at her direct personal behest. On her watch maybe, we shall see.

At the end of the day this is personality politics in an argument that may well rather be about Labor’s choice of leader than which party we’d eventually choose at a poll that’s still a year off.

On the pure relative merits of polices though, I don’t think that Labor are nearly as bad on this issue as the alternative are, nor that this policy is potentially as bad as it appears on the surface to be.

I share your concerns Marilyn, but perhaps not your confidence that it will emerge that those decisions were in fact taken by the department of PM&C. Nor in fact did any evidence emerge that specific decisions were taken by Howard or his cabinet in relation to SIEVX. Reith just got ahead of himself in trying to make rather sickening political capital over events that were not as he seemed to hope they may be.

My feeling in relation to Howard was that he was a racist but as best I can tell neither Abbott nor Gillard hold those kinds of personal views. They have however each fallen into the practice of pandering to racists in the electorate in order to secure their imprimatur at the ballot box. As I’ve repeatedly said it’s been a race to the bottom and a poisonous one at that.

I fervently wish that Gillard would stand up for multiculturalism in a way that I harbour not shred of hope that Abbot ever might. I hope I’m not wasting my optimism on her, but when the situation reaches a point where we’re faced with the lesser of two evils I can’t imagine choosing Abbott.

Evidence is now in that the AFP had a spy called Waleed Sultani working with Abu Quessay to load refugees at gunpoint with Indonesian and Australian police and evidence has been around for a decade that DIAC and whole of government knew all about him for over 18 months.

That is why they did not even try to extradite Quessay.

I despise Abbott and Gillard but we don’t get to choose them, they are foisted on us by the lazy voters of Lalor and Warringah and then their parties.

Well that’s Howard taken care of a day late and a dollar short, but as already think Gillard and Abbott are both despicable I guess there’s no point requiring evidence of ill conduct to weigh against my earlier cautious optimism. The outlook you’re offering seems too resolutely set against them to be moved, and that’s too bleak a prospect for me to entertain by halves.

Whichever way you vote you are sending electoral signals that you endorse the policy suite.
If you say that you have no other choice then in fact you don’t.
But that lack of choice is of your own making.
So what is democratic about that?
I vote Labor(always have) but there is now no recognisable Labor, so I will not fluff their policy vacuum. A few good men/women , and a few cretins, facading the string pullers is what we now have.
I won’t assist Abbott,so it looks like I will do what all voters should do.
Educate themselves and vote accordingly.
At this juncture it looks green for starters.The 2 biggees are too twin like for me.
Neither will even mumble population or sustainable,both want unfettered growth.

Fair enough! I don’t want to turn this into a dissertation on the parlous state of Australian politics that will inevitably conclude that no matter who you vote for the problem is that you always seem to get a politician.

Earlier I thought that there might be room for cautious optimism. It seems there isn’t in the minds of some. Excuse me for hoping it might be otherwise.

In your own words “consequences of policy decisions are not known but become known”. Whereupon I would merely appeal to allowing new policies on this issue time to percolate before you seek to rectify them based on what?

Bullshit Marilyn. Gillard is strong and is delivering on education and health reforms in a way that Abbott may only dream about. Don’t believe the Murdoch – MSM – Abbott line about incompetent government – our economy is the envy of the western world.

We’ll have to agree to differ on this one HG. I think that we are entitled to our birthright. My parents and grandparents and their parents helped to build this country, and to defend it in time of war. They paid their taxes and so do I and I say that we Australians shall decide who comes to Australia and the conditions under which they come and not otherwise : Not while there is blood in my veins and breath in my body.

If that sounds like Howard, it is coincidental as he sought to tap into a rich vein of patriotism and nationalism.

Ask the citizens of any wealthy country whether the citizens of the poor country next door should be able to walk in and access their hospital and health system, get their public housing and use their libraries and take their jobs.

Were you there when the line was drawn in the sand ,saying this is the point where we start deciding?
Only I think there may be an entire dispossessed culture waiting to renegotiate that part.

Obviously you cannot see the inconsistency of your position whereby you defend Gillard as some sort of Messiah,when (Labor) she is a mirror of Howard.
Remind how that makes it Labor?
Do you not consider any morphs unacceptable to your values?

What’s next DQ?
My little idealistic self has a black arm band view of history?

The media Doug,the media.
Clinging by her fingernails only to have a scandal drop on her door step during the election, real.

Damn this idealistic euphoria and black arm band.
Labor deserves to govern,(if they re-embrace their roots) Gillard does not.
She doesn’t deserve Abbott’s bullying or the media evisceration either,but that does not license her to govern based on what a gang of idiot, union destroying,control freaks demand.
If that position is reflected in some form at the next election I will neither be surprised nor disappointed (beyond hope).
Que sera sera.

Bullshit, we do not get to decide who seeks asylum. Everyone has the right to seek asylum and it is racist and obnoxious to suggest otherwise.

In 13 words at the Evian Conference in 1938 Australia and the west conspired in the most evil genocide in modern times – as we don’t have a racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.

And the Jews got sent back and I read a lot of Israeli historian books and some of their papers to find out how they tick and what we are doing now with Afghans, iraqis and Sri Lankans is saying ” we will decide if you can dare to leave home to be safe”” and conspiring in genocides.

You Doug, need to stop thinking about you and your frigging migrant parents.

Read Manne again on what? Manne Robert is dead wrong to suppose we can dump refugees out of our country because they dared not to drown.

It flies totally in the face of the law and as we are the only morons who think we have some god given right to do it that shows you how moronic we really are.

ASylum seekers are human beings with the same rights as you and your frigging migrant parents.

Doc Evatt is a labor hero who was involved closely in the writing of the Universal declaration of human rights, he would not piss on this current mob of tossers and losers who go against everything in that document to appeal to the worst of the worst, the sort most would not piss on if they were on fire.

Even Angry Anderson has now decided that the Hazara people are truly, truly desparate and not criminals but it is mainly Hazara we will be dumping without cause and at great cost on disease infested hell holes.

Of course we get to make “fucking policies” we need them in order to plan how we’re to go about implementing things like UN conventions, otherwise there’d be no budgetary allocation for assistance at all.

So there is a conversation up on the relative value of the ALP to the coalition under Abbott.
Marilyn, as I’ve said before, the problem with your argument is that it rests on the presumption of some capacity and will within the international community to enforce such provisions.
Neither party locally has shown the slightest interest in adopting more humane policies as to asylum seekers; they remain certain that softening policy, as Abbott has accused Labor of doing, is some thing the (conditioned) public won’t accept, instead.
Hypo, if Gillard is no better than Abbott, converse to your argument, why bother changing government? Isn’t it just so that Abbott and co have worked assiduously against any softening of policy and for naked political gain? The public have rewarded them with higher polls figures than for Labor through this; should they receive even more reward for their part in whatever is wrong in this country?
It is true that government in a small country like Australia is increasingly disconnected from the needs and wishes of local people, unless its the local kleptocracy.
Australia is subject to offshore influence as to policy issues ( eg, the timid response to Assange, also the immediate conforming with the US as to offshore wars.)
Commercial decision-making mediated through corporate influence with loss of local autonomy due to FTA’s, has weakened our capacity to decide for ourselves on most issues apart from Asylum seeker policy.This adds to the uncertainty that has many Australians adopting a no prisoners taken attitude as to refugees.
Defence and Intelligence “harmonising” remain largely unpublicised,of course.
On most issues it is not so much a question of Americanisation/globalisation anymore, but the pace of that, but many people feel that Labor still does better on social policy in other areas, compared to the Coalition,
Population movement policy may well be inhumane and both government, politics and the public cowardly in their thinking, but short of the power of God, or the US aiming ICBM’s at us to make us take a more generous approach to asylum seekers, can anyone see the staus quo changing or any miraculous change in national zeitgeist?
It would be wiser to win the public over rather than scolding it, calling the masses stupid, ignorant racist pigs likely will only make them more stubborn.

The misery is set to continue to points of increasing suffering,unless and until we speak about sustainable world populations and behaviour.
We have gone well beyond that point.Everything we do we will be doing more sooner rather than later.
We will see/get more refugees going fwd.Guaranteed.So those with a sense of entitlement better get used to sharing.Carrying a Made in Australia label means diddly squat.Ask the ones who really were.

Hypo, I’d query the use of the descriptor “entitlement”.I think, given the conditions you describe in the first para, “insecurity” might demonstrate a greater accuracy.
Stern lectures delivered school marmish by activists to the rest, as if to a class of kinders, only makes the work of Abbott and co even easier, in the current climate.
This is particularly when “sharing” only applies to the masses, rather than the 1% actually responsible for most of the catastrophes.
This a point Peter Van Onselen also, some how missed in his recent article.

Whatever.It is a political impasse which is looking like an Abbott win.
Nope,that’s not good for the country,but unless we get a real ‘new paradigm’,every election will draw us closer to permanent negative /fear/hate campaigning,because this genie is impossible to put back in its bottle.
A flaw is a defect.I think duplicating the other side on several of their previous slammed(by Labor) policies,and playing factional puppet is more than ‘just’ flaws.
Surely you don’t justify an abandonment of Labor values as a flaw?

It is clear that the electorate are aware of Abbott’s character and his games.
I’m almost bewildered by the amount of people who seem to think along the lines of ‘when they wake up to Abbott’ etc.
Good god if they aren’t onto him by now,I doubt they ever will be,so where either surrounded by cretins or sadists.Either way they sure make up a big block of voters.Again I say it.
The media,the media.
None of us get to vote them in or out.

· Around 60 people from the ROP boat 412 have been told that they will be transferred to Nauru in two weeks time.
All boats after 409 will be lined up for transfer

Christmas Island

· On Christmas Island families, children, singles and unaccompanied minors were told on Friday that they would be sent to Nauru.

· There are pregnant women and unaccompanied minors as well as children in the groups.

· All were told that UNHCR would process their claims. This has been verified as being information given by DIAC personnel. It is absolutely untrue.

· IOM personnel handed out Return- Go back where you came from forms and package information.

· Women and children stopped their hunger strike on Sunday morning

· Men were told that maybe they would not go to Nauru and urged to stop their hunger strike.

· Pallets of batons and shields were brought into North West Point Detention Centre.

· Families and Unaccompanied Minors are in Lilac and Aqua compounds.

· All compounds are locked down. IHMS have set up medical posts inside each compound so that there is no need for anyone to leave the compound even for medical. Green heart is closed.

NAURU

Meanwhile on Nauru, the Australian army is struggling to put up tents for themselves on the crumbling guano pinnacles on Topside camp. Next they will be digging pit toilets. There is no water supply at Topside. This is where 60 men are to be taken in two weeks time to prove how tough Australia can be.

There are vulnerable people in both groups including survivors of torture.

It is unclear what the no disadvantage test means. While Kieran Keke is being told that “people will be processed very quickly”, the Prime minister is insisting that there will be “no advantage” and insisting on no time limits.

Concern is growing as to the way in which people will be forced onto planes and what will happen if they resist. These families will know that once they have been sent to Nauru their lives may be on hold for a long time. We know now that in order to get the families onto planes back to Christmas island after the funerals of their families in that guards crept into the rooms and took the children from their beds by force. Naturally the parents had no choice but to follow.
“AUSTRALIA. Built by boatpeople.”

You’ve been banned from Bob Ellis blog; see if you can get banned here too. If you can’t see that Labor under Gillard is better than almost any combination the conservatives can put up, I fear for your powers of discernment.

Much as I love Bob his blog is a nightmare. A bunch of Laborites tearing at each other’s throats and occasionally being baited by trolls who are summarily banned but keep popping up in different guises. Many of the conversations revolve around almost religiously styled arguments from the authority of somebody’s self styled superior intellect but quickly devolve into gutter abuse.

Marilyn,

Much as I think banning unnecessary you’re stridency is symptomatic of an ideological bent that you don’t so much seek to persuade us to as to enforce. Whereas I’ll take a stance and argue it while there’s a dialectic exchange in the offing, I don’t see much point in simply defending a position unswervingly from a fixed ideology. Occasionally we should say our piece and agree to disagree.

Why do you call universal declaration of human rights as some sort of ideology.

I thought the fucking churches all taught the maxim of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I would not like to be told by some spiv in Canberra that I am too stupid to manage my money because I am blac,

I would not like to be told by some spiv that I cannot ask for protection from persecution simply because I am brown and caught a boat to an island – I would not like to be forced at gunpoint onto a plane and dumped on a pile of malaria infested poo.

Article 30 of the declaration of human rights states that no state can remove any right from any person.

If that is some deranged ideology then I am proud to uphold them.

Now tell us what is great about Gillard as she is worse than Billy Hughes.

How is it even possible to be worse off under Abbott? You have no idea what you are talking about but I suggest you read the detention reports on the Ombudsmans website to see how appalling it is today.

Now we have the deranged situation where the Indonesians will no longer necessarily be charged with anything, the children will certainly be sent home, while the passengers will be sent into exile on a malaria infested mound of bird shit.

Don’t be dumber than you have to be, go and do some reading.

The only way they could be worse off under Abbott is if he actually shoots them at the border, we just kill them at sea.

Reports from the boat they refused to rescue for 41 hours is that the refugees were in the water for 15 hours and were half dead when rescued and are now in Curtin prison without legal rights.

People are jailed now for years because the system is so rotten under Gillard they have to have 3 hearings to get it right when the fact is they were refugees when they got here and before we tortured them.

The system as designed to work is that people arrive at the borders of other nations and ask for help.

It is nothing to do with fucking numbers.

There are 7 or so billion people on the planet, they are all entitled to seek asylum.

When the law says EVERYONE, it does not say SOME PEOPLE.

Any country on earth can descend into hell, thousands of Mexicans caught in the drug wars are being granted refugee status for example.

I think the 6,000 who are getting out of camps and those who won’t be subject to TPV’s might care to differ.

So why don’t you just stop being rude and completely hyperbolic and take a chill pill for a minute.

7 billion people are NOT entitled to claim asylum that’s just bullshit. Most claims would be refused on the basis that they don’t qualify for asylum because we simply aren’t all subject to a well-founded fear of persecution. And besides you’re making my point for me after a fashion. If we all claimed asylum at once the who’s going to accept our claim? YOU?! The last person not claiming asylum in the world, would probably be in a position to claim asylum from asylum seekers and that’s about it…

Don’t you see that asylum only works while a majority people acting on humanitarian concerns are able to help a persecuted minority. At the point where numbers get anywhere beyond a manageable minority then the appropriate response is to end the persecution in order to return them to their rightful homes. In fact we know that where people are wronged righting the wrong is always desirable. But the point I’m making here is that as numbers of the affected rise it goes beyond being desirable to become imperative.

But even if we’re desperately at odds about how many people Australia can or should take then 6,000 is better than none. In the sense that there are any such things as good, better and best, you seem to want to disregard the relative merits of anything that doesn’t meet your standard of idealism. So anything that isn’t the best simply isn’t good enough for you. And that’s a pity because if you voted in Abbott the few who are being promised a better hearing under Labor’s new policy will most likely rot in the camps, drown at sea, or wind up languishing on TPV’s for years. And that’s a pretty shit result!

And what’s more favouring Labour over Coalition policy is not just about favouring on leader over the other any more than it would be true to say that the distinction we make regarding the lesser of two evils requires us to agree with either policy in its entirety. On mandatory detention the major parties are identical, the greens may be better, but they won’t take government, so effectively the choice is between the lesser of of two evils whether you like it or not. I can tell you don’t like inconvenient truths but after the way you’ve approached this issue all I can really do is state it as I see it and offer to agree to disagree.

“it does not mean they are entitled but under the law they are entitled to.”

So what the law is meaningless now?

It strikes me to be as difficult for me get you to acknowledge practicalities as it was for Leigh Sales to get Abbott to acknowledge that claiming asylum is not illegal.

The facts of the matter stated clearly, and hopefully once and for all, are that everyone has the right to claim asylum, but because not everyone has a valid claim then it has to be said that not everyone has the right to asylum.

On that we may agree. However I also argue that what asylum is intended to offer is protection, and that sometimes the best way to protect is to end persecution rather than resettle large numbers of people. I thought this was a totally uncontroversial statement in deference to the practicalities of some situations. Yet you’re unwilling or unable to acknowledge it because you’ve dug a hole for yourself by refusing to accept that numbers matter, or indeed that any of the practicalities of implementing humanitarian policy, even with the best of intentions, can ever be allowed to temper the ideological stance that you’ve taken.

This, I believe, is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

As for “killing innocent people”, deaths have resulted from boat trips many of which will be avoided by taking people from the camps in Indonesia. I hope, as I believe may be the intent of the policy, that there will be fewer or ideally no further boat trip deaths as a result. If we fail in that then we should not stop at the limits of this policy, we should try harder. But realistically speaking we’re spending a bunch of money to make the new processing centres (ideologically compromised though they may be) more liveable and humane than the detention centres of the past. So if that does come to pass then refugees will be temporarily housed in lower numbers, better conditions and greater safety than anywhere else between their former homes and the camps, except their final intended destination here in Australia. Now I don’t happen to think that’s in line with our obligations to the refugee conventions, nor necessary, nor consistent with humanitarian values. But killing people it ain’t! And your continued hyperbole around that very issue simply isn’t helping by exaggerating characterisations of a situation that on the facts of it would appear to be quite different.

The applicable cliché in that instance brings to mind Henny Penny squawking “the sky is falling”.

41 hours to mount a rescue is killing people, driving them to suicide in prison is killing people, bombing them in their own countries is killing people, sending them home after abusing their rights is killing people.

And what I meant is everyone has the right to seek asylum, it does not mean they will be granted asylum but they are entitled to ask. Just as they are entitled to ask for a glass of bloody water.

As I understand the new policy the people being taken from the camps will get here first. The rest is just your usual tirade of abuse as you become increasingly frustrated with a set of facts that don’t happen to suit you.

People in boats die when a combination of events occur. People traffickers offer them a service which is clearly negligent, the boats are unseaworthy, the risk is too great, the weather conditions unfavourable and last but by no means least rescue is too late to do any good. If you want to go back further to say that being a refugee or being desperate after a prolonged stay in Indonesia are also contributing factors then I may agree, but then you’d have to concede that the remedies being offered for those should be taken. In the long term persecution should be ended and in the short term a number greater than UNHCR have identified are offered a way out by the new policy.

In other words you’ve been offered a solution, albeit a limited one, and you refuse either to even acknowledge the part of it that is better. Sure there are aspects of this that have the potential to be as bad or worse than others in recent years. Nothing is stopping us from continuing to try and change those. These “regional processing centres” may turn out to be detention centres under another name. But the argument would be that as long as some people are able to come without going through them then provided that our intake more or less keeps up with the flow through the camps in Indonesia then perhaps for the first time since we started talking about this then an actual functioning queue will emerge.

I hope I’m right and that aspects of this new policy will be implemented more humanely and with better results for those refugees in our region who most urgently need our help. It is as if you want to hope otherwise, and I think that sucks!

Indeed HG – it is a trial. Most of the conservative trolls stay for a while to annoy Bob and the regulars, take a pot-shot or two and get banned or lose interest. Then there is the strange multi-headed critter that seems to think it is my keeper. I haven’t mentioned religion lately, but that seems to get it going.

By the way, did you read Damon Young’s latest effort at the Drum? He seems to be the only contributor who it is worth bothering to read :

Not so sure about that, paul. Though I detest Abbott, I doubt that he would risk inciting the workers more than he has to; he’ll make noises, of course, but the evidence suggests that he is no John Howard as regards industrial relations.

But I cannot think of a single issue where his likely stance would be preferable to that of Labor.

It is called the small target strategy. If an opposition leader’s stances are nearly those of the government, how can they effectively attack him? It is all part of the “they’re all the same” crap the Murdoch – MSM – Abbott unholy trilogy is pushing. And swallowed by the gullible.

Yes, Jennifer- we
look forward to your insights. I for one hope that things are not too bad for you, given your own burdens.
Being all to human, it seems we are almost universally incapable of making that leap that can put a person into the shoes of another.. perhaps we are just meaningless monads, after all, when empathy is such a scarce resource as to make diamonds seem commonplace by comparison,

Geez Paul have you got a word of the day going on with “monads” there? That’s a real vocabulary stretcher.

As for your common or garden carbon allotrope, diamonds aren’t as rare as De Beers would have us think. It’s all in the marketing don’t you know.

Ron White says De beers came close to truth in advertising…

The old slogan for diamonds was: diamonds are forever, the next one was : diamonds…take her breath away, and new one’s : diamonds …render her speechless , why don’t they just go ahead and say it…: diamonds…that’ll shut her up! ….. For a minute!

The decimation of Labor is now ensured as Ferguson back-flips on winding down the biggest polluters in our country, and Roxon decides to sell us a lie about internet security,based on what the US has ordered.
The election could not come quick enough.

2 Tea parties .
One weak and incompetent with a leader reflecting those qualities.
The other gutless and opportunistic,with a bullshitting bully for a leader.
Surrounded by a Nation of apathetic voters,driven by greed, and herded by the MSM.
Have a nice day.🙂

You tend to get the politicians you deserve. The electorate has proved itself sane, by a bare majority, over many years.

Things go in cycles; not many years ago all state governments were ALP, and the Feds ‘Liberal’. Now the Feds are ALP and the States are nearly all Libs.

Looking back on my posts of 2009, I predicted that this would be the case; so its no surprise to me.

The concerted campaign against Federal Labor has broken all records for mischief, yet the polls today are recovering towards the sensible position, where an excellent Labor government is headed towards a comfortable lead, and a comfortable win in 2013.